Having got the equipment ashore and installed it on the white sand, we each wandered off about our own business. Larry and Margo lay in the shallow water half asleep, being rocked by the faint, gentle ripples. Mother led her cavalcade off on a short walk, armed with a trowel and a basket. Spiro, clad only in his underpants and looking like some dark hairy prehistoric man, waddled into the stream that flowed from the lake to the sea and stood knee deep, scowling down into the transparent waters, a trident held at the ready as the shoals of fish flicked around his feet. Theodore and I drew lots with Leslie as to which side of the lake we should have, and then set off in opposite directions. The boundary marking the half-way mark on the lake-shore was a large and particularly misshapen olive. Once we reached there we would turn back and retrace our footsteps, and Leslie would do the same on his side. This cut out the possibility of his shooting us, by mistake, in some dense and confusing canebrake. So, while Theodore and I dipped and pottered among the pools and streamlets, like a pair of eager herons, Leslie strode stockily through the undergrowth on the other side of the lake, and an occasional explosion would echo across to us to mark his progress.
Lunch-time came and we assembled hungrily on the beach, Leslie with a bulging bag of game, hares damp with blood, partridge and quail, snipe and wood pigeons; Theodore and I with our test-tubes and bottles a-shimmer with small life. A fire blazed, the food was piled on the rugs, and the wine fetched from the sea's edge where it had been put to cool. Larry pulled his corner of the rug up the dune so that he could stretch full-length surrounded by the white trumpets of the lilies. Theodore sat upright and neat, his beard wagging as he chewed his food slowly and methodically. Margo sprawled elegantly in the sun, picking daintily at a pile of fruit and vegetables. Mother and Dodo were installed in the shade of a large umbrella. Leslie squatted on his haunches in the sand, his gun across his thighs, eating a huge hunk of cold meat with one hand and stroking the barrels of the weapon meditatively with the other. Nearby Spiro crouched by the fire, sweat running down his furrowed face and dropping in gleaming drops into the thick pelt of black hair of his chest, as he turned and improvized olive-wood spit, with seven fat snipe on it, over the flames.
'What a heavenly place!' mumbled Larry through a mouthful of food, lying back luxuriously among the shining flowers. 'I feel this place was designed for me. I should like to lie here forever, having food and wine pressed into my mouth by groups of naked and voluptuous dryads. Eventually, of course, over the centuries, by breathing deeply and evenly I should embalm myself with this scent, and then one day my faithful dryads would find me gone, and only the scent would remain. Will someone throw me one of those delicious-looking figs?
'I read a most interesting book on embalming once,' said Theodore enthusiastically. 'They certainly seemed to go to a great deal of trouble to prepare the bodies in Egypt. I must say I thought the method of... er ... extracting the brain through the nose was most ingenious.'
'Dragged them down through the nostrils with a sort of hook arrangement, didn't they?' inquired Larry.
'Larry, dear, not while we're eating?
Lunch being over we drifted into the shade of the nearby olives and drowsed sleepily through the heat of the afternoon, while the sharp, soothing song of the cicadas poured over us. Occasionally one or other of us would rise, wander down to the sea and flop into the shallows for a minute before coming back, cooled, to resume his siesta. At four o'clock Spiro, who had been stretched out massive and limp, bubbling with snores, regained consciousness with a snort and waddled down the beach to relight the fire for tea. The rest of us awoke slowly, dreamily, stretching and sighing, and drifted down over the sand towards the steaming, chattering kettle. As we crouched with the cups in our hands, blinking and musing, still half asleep, a robin appeared among the lilies and hopped down towards us, his breast glowing, his eyes bright. He paused some ten feet away and surveyed us critically. Deciding that we needed some entertainment, he hopped to where a pair of lilies formed a beautiful arch, posed beneath them theatrically, puffed out his chest, and piped a liquid, warbling song. When he had finished he suddenly ducked his head in what appeared to be a ludicrously conceited bow, and then flipped off through the lilies, frightened by our burst of laughter.
'They are dear little things, robins,' said Mother. "There was one in England that used to spend hours by me when I was gardening. I love the way they puff up their little chests.'
'The way that one bobbed looked exactly as if he was bowing,' said Theodore. 'I must say when he ... er ... puffed up his chest he looked very like a rather... you know ... a rather outside opera singer.'
'Yes, singing something rather frothy and light. . . . Strauss, I should think,' agreed Larry.
'Talking of operas,' said Theodore, his eyes gleaming, 'did I ever tell you about the last opera we had in Corfu?
We said no, he hadn't told us, and settled ourselves comfortably, getting almost as much amusement from the sight of Theodore telling the story as from the story itself.
'It was . . . um . . . one of those travelling opera companies, you know. I think it came from Athens, but it may have been Italy. Anyway, their first performance was to be Tosca. The singer who took the part of the heroine was exceptionally ... er ... well developed, as they always seem to be. Well, as you know, in the final act of the opera the heroine casts herself to her doom from the battlements of a fortress -or, rather, a castle. On the first night the heroine climbed up on to the castle walls, sang her final song, and then cast herself to her . . . you know . . . her doom on the rocks below. Unfortunately it seems that the stage hands had forgotten to put anything beneath the walls for her to land on. The result was that the crash of her landing and her subsequent ... er ... yells of pain detracted somewhat from the impression that she was a shattered corpse on the rocks far below. The singer who was just bewailing the fact that she was dead had to sing quite... er... quite powerfully in order to drown her cries. The heroine was, rather naturally, somewhat upset by the incident, and so the following night the stage hands threw themselves with enthusiasm into the job of giving her a pleasant landing. The heroine, somewhat battered, managed to hobble her way through the opera until she reached the ... er ... final scene. Then she again climbed on to the battlements, sang her last song, and cast herself to her death. Unfortunately the stage hands, having made the landing too hard on the first occasion, had gone to the opposite extreme. The huge pile of mattresses and ... er . . . you know, those springy bed things, was so resilient that the heroine hit them and then bounced up again. So while the cast was down at the ... er ... what d'you call them? ... ah, yes, the footlights, telling each other she was dead, the upper portions of the heroine reappeared two or three times above the battlements, to the mystification of the audience.'